So I’ve been watching the weather forecast and 10 days ago the weatherman said that we should not drop below freezing again this year.

So I went out and cleaned up all the dead foliage and put down new part, got the fountain out from under the protective cover, pulled out the new official display garden sign and spent several days pulling my seedlings out from the garage and getting a new display bed planted.

Then I wake up to snow yesterday and ice today … sigh … thanks Weatherman! 🙂

Thankfully daylilies are fairly hardy so the overall damage should be minimal and nothing really expensive was planted. Just happy to be starting up again for the new season.

Frozen Fountain

New Display Bed for 2014 – 17 unregistered seedlings from several different local hybridizers

The main Display Circle – April 2014. Was very happy to see that none of the daylilies died during our hard winter

It has been raining for the last 3 days so I’ve been running out to get pics of the daylilies blooming for the first time this season so I could show them off. Weather gets better I’ll need to do another day of showing off everything blooming.

So what was new over the last three days … some nice stuff. My wife had one of her favorites bloom (Princess Diana) which we waited patiently when we first saw it for it to go down in price until it was in the budget for the garden. Rocket Blast also bloomed for the first time this season today which is my favorite pure reds I’ve seen to date.

Lots of my own crosses blooming in the back test bed … but still not seeing anything worth registering. I was excited though to find out that with just a little more work my garden can qualify as an official daylily display garden. So when I get better from the surgery recovery … just a little more weeding and we can register to become official. Our garden has dips and tets, small, miniatures, spiders and doubles and we have enough different varieties (over 50 (our garden has 121)) and have them all labeled clearly … so looking forward to getting that distinction as there are only 10 registered daylily display gardens in all of Indiana currently (so it is not a common thing to get in my area).

Okay what is blooming new over the last three days:

This is a shot of one of our daylily beds in the garden. There are 50 different daylilies in this one.

Wild At Heart

Strawberry Patch – no red or pink on this one … just goes to show when you name your daylily it does not have to say much about what it looks like. 😉

Sarasota Night Eyes – this is one of our 4 miniatures which we show around our mailbox. Miniature daylilies are that are less than 3 inches in diameter. I like the thin eye on this one.

Rose for Charlotte – this daylily is a very tall spider. A spider is a daylily whose petal length is four times or more the petal’s width or more. If you are used to more common daylilies, some spiders can look really ususual. We have 3 spiders in our garden currently.

Rocket Blast – amazing red daylily and you can pick it up from nurseries that have it for not much $$$. A great addition to your garden. My favorite red daylily.

Princess Diana – one of my wife’s favorite. Did not open all the way today … will get better image on a future blog pic.

Painting the Roses Red – really striking with watermarks (faded area of daylily) which for some reasons did not show well in the picture.

Italian Rivera – this was a gift for helping with some website work. Beautiful red with a thin white border.

Heartfelt Challenge – see the sign! You have to have those to become a registered display garden and mine just came in yesterday. Was like a kid getting them put together to run out and get them in the ground. (simple pleasures for simple men … I know … I know)

Green Dolphin Street – pretty green in the morning … sun fades to very pale yellow during the day

Forsyth Summer Snow – white, white, white. Daylilies cannot truly create true white, black or blue. However you can get daylilies that look white by getting either yellow or pink that is so pale that it looks white to the human eye. Forsyth Summer Snow is one the prettiest pure whites I’ve seen from the yellow side of the spectrum (Lipstick Halo is another in our garden that does it from the pink side).

Forsyth Miami

Forsyth Indian Summer

Fairy Tale Pink

Dr Jerrold Corbett – pink with a great bright yellow ruffled edge.

Condilla – while spiders are not a form of daylily I really enjoy, my wife does not care doubles (which are daylilies that have a flower within a flower to use laymen terms for it) … so we do not have many in our garden (we have 4). However she does like Condilla which is another older daylily (registered 1977) but is a beautiful gold double. Simple but striking.

Buttered Popcorn – this is an old daylily (registered in 1971) but it is a beautiful yellow. If you drive through North Carolina, you’ll see them a lot as the state used them to line the major highways and interchanges. Seas of this bright yellow. It might be an older daylily but it is one I recommend having for your garden.

Seedling – purchased from Kirchoff/Morss gardens as it was not good enough for them to registered (too low bud count) but it is beautiful

One of my seedling crosses – Condilla x Starman’s Quest. Not good enough to register so this one is going to a neighbor as a gift as it is too nice to just throw into the composter.

If you asked me to save just one daylily that we purchased from our garden for me it would have to be With All My Heart. The colors are beautiful and the flower fits the name to me. It is not the most showy daylily … but its the only one in my time with daylilies that I saw at a nursery and said … I want it … don’t care what the price is (fortunately it was affordable and I didn’t have to break the piggy bank to get it).

Blooming today for the first time of this season:

With All My Heart

Belle Isle Lipstick

Big Bill – tall large flower with lot of buds

Charlotte Roycroft

Lipstick Halo – Bob Roycroft is responsible for getting me into daylilies. I learned a lot from him and my wife and I were regular customers of his. As a result we are able to get a pot of a few fans of this daylily before he even registered it. My wife and I were there when he realized that his original pick for a name, Lipstick Traces, was already taken and we helped him rename it to Lipstick Halo (very cool to be there right place at the right time). This is my favorite white in the garden with just touch (a halo) of pink to it.

Blooming on Thursday for the first time was the most we ever paid for a daylily ($80). New varieties can go for $100 to $250 for a first year fan or double fan but that has always been to rich for the family blood. I have been able to get some of those high end first year daylilies through trading with hybridizers, trading services or through helping my daylily club but not through cash. Primal Scream is now down to around $15 for a double fan several years later but at that time it was my anniversary present from my wife and I love her for it. So just remember with virtually all daylilies they drop in prices quickly over the years and just keep a book like I do of those $150+ ones you see that you really like and in a few to 5 years you’ll be able to get them for $30 or less normally.

Blooming for the first time today for this season:

Primal Scream – tall flower, geat form and bright eye catching orange

Mystical Rainbow

Paco Bell – REALLY bright colors on this daylily even if there are many red and yellow daylilies out there. We have a dog named Paco that is not my favorite but my wife swears to me she did not buy this daylily because of its name.

Been under the weather for a few days so sorry a few days late posting this.

Going forward I’ll post the first time blooms first (ie not seen on the blog yet) … then the seen before daylilies … then seedlings we purchased … with a final of any seedlings of my own attempts blooming in the seedling test bed.

Kermit the Frog – early in the morning this daylily is fairly green … as the sun fades it the daylily turns more pure yellow. When this daylily was a seedling at Browns Ferry Gardens and shown to us by Mr. Charles Douglas from his test bed it was VERY green. Too bad it lost that as matured. But this was the first time a major nursery owner showed me behind the scenes to his private seedling bed and this one was the star at that time. For just that reason I had to get it when I had a chance to add it to our garden.

Key Lime Ice – a gorgeous white daylily with green accents. Large flower … this is one of my favorites in our entire garden.

Linda Beck

Myrtle Beach

Point of View … this is an older hybrid that I highly recommend if you want a tall bright red that should be affordable to pick up by now.

Now blooming today that have been shown previously

Black Eyed Bully

Border Music

Calico Poly

Carolina Trilogy – better bloom on this one today. You can see the mix of pink and gentle red along with the light pink edge. A beauty of a daylily.

Hill Street Blues

Hoosier Party Frock

Lavender Rainbow

Mark’s Bouquet – love this picture of this fun speckled daylily

Peasant King

Sanford Intermezzo

Shipwreck Cove

Still the One

Seedlings purchased from nurseries

Cream Seedling

Seedlings of my own design blooming in my test bed today

Seedling – Anders

Seedling Anders – keeping an eye on this one as I like the varigated eye.

Amethyst Veil – this is our other speckled daylily. A great effect where the color appears as dots on the petals/sepals that is still fairly uncommon in registered daylilies. My wife loves this daylily. It was a Display only flower from the nursery we were at but they messed up our pre-order so badly that they offered to sell us a fan of it as an apology. Very happy to have been able to get it and add it to the garden … a very different and striking daylily.

Andy Candy – a very short stalk height on this daylily but a big colorful bloom. My oldest son asked me to get this one for him as it had his name in it.

Lavender Rainbow – previously shown but not as a single image. So wanted to give you a close up.

Wonder Of It All – bloom needs to open up a bit more. Very ruffled daylily.

Cream Seedling – shown before in group shot. Wanted to give you a close up. Not one of my seedlings but one we wanted for our unnamed seedling area.

Super Red – named but unregistered daylily from Roycroft nursery. Look at all the buds yet to bloom. Nice red that really increases well.

Finally … two seedlings from my bed area where I try to grow my own new varieties of daylily. Just wanted to show these blooms to show that not all attempts are a success. These will go in the pile to give to friends that would like to take them as they don’t make the cut to keep in the bed for possible future registration.

Border Music x Peasant King – looked like a miniature version of Border Music but not as eye popping with the colors

Some good new flowers blooming today. I hope to spread some daylily knowledge through the posts on having daylilies as well if you want to get into adding them to your garden.

So the first step of each day when I walk through the garden is to deadhead. Since each daylily bloom only lasts one day, it is important to carefully remove the dead flower the next morning from the plant so that the plant can put its energy into other things (stronger roots, better future flowers, etc.). While you do not HAVE to do this, it will make your garden look better and be healthier. So the first step of today was to pinch off all the flowers from yesterday’s blog entry. Spent daylily bloom can be great composting material so if you have a composter add them to it.

Calico Poly. I know this one bloomed yesterday as well. But it was a nice cluster shot of blooms today and one that is hiding on the right was a poly bloom and had the 8 petals instead of 6 that I mentioned yesterday.

Carolina Trilogy – This one normally has a vivid white border that was missing … hopefully a later bloom will show this off more.

Hill Street Blues. Tall flower with a very pretty faded eye. What is an eye? A colored zone on the petals and sepals of the flower just above the throat (center). In this case its the light purple area next to the green. Normally eyes are a darker color than the petals but in the case of the faded eye … it is washed out and creates a lighter color. My hydrid Key West Sunset (shown on the left of the blog banner) has a similar effect with its faded eye.

Malachite Prism. Love the strong triangular eye on this flower.

Mark’s Bouquet. This one is one of the few speckled daylilies. Where a 2nd color is on the petals and sepal but in a dotted fashion. This effect is referred to by many different terms such as dotted, speckled, and stippled. I personally use the term speckled. We have two speckled daylilies in our garden (Amethyst Veil being the other). Its a cool effect but so far its still fairly uncommon to see it.

Peasant King – one of my favorites. With yellow and purple being contrasting colors … this one really stands out with the dark purple with the cream yellow.

Sanford Intermezzo – okay it bloomed yesterday as well, but I really like the look of the picture so shrinking it would have been criminal.

Shipwreck Cove – similar look to Peasant King but it is a brighter white to go with the dark purple.

Unnamed Seedling – occassionally on my wife and I’s trips to nurseries … you’ll find they have seedlings they are not planning on registering available for sale often at great prices. Out of 200 seedlings, one might normally be different enough, have a good enough stalk, enough branching and bud count and a well formed flower to become a new daylily. Doesn’t mean they cannot still be beautiful in your garden if you pick them up. This is a cream flower that is in our unnamed seedling bed. It has a ruffled edge and a really great color .. even if it didn’t make the cut to get registered by the nursery we purchased it from.